How To Be A Liberal: The Story of Freedom and the Fight for its Survival

by Ian Dunt

A new notion emerged, called cultural appropriation. It described the use of a culture’s ideas, intellectual property, traditions, symbols, artefacts, genres, rituals, or technologies by members of another culture without permission. That included things like cuisine, dance, dress, language, music, traditional medicine and religious symbols. Under liberal thought, especially Constant and Mill, the mixing of people, cultures and ideas was considered to be intrinsically good. There was a fundamental underlying belief that by mixing ideas, greater truths could be discovered. And indeed on any typical cultural account of civilisation, collaboration and cross-fertilisation propelled the evolution of all the great pleasures of life, from music to recipes. But under identity politics, culture was increasingly becoming a battleground where hermetically sealed groups could not share ideas.